On-line advertisements (“ads”) allow advertisers to reach a wide range of viewers through the Internet. The selection of ads for presentation (e.g., display), such as with search results and other information, and the ordering of those advertisements, may be achieved by various techniques. In one example technique, an initial determination is made to identify all advertisements that are a match or near match for applied search terms or other query items or information. The match may be made, for example, between one or more words in a query, and keywords identified by an advertiser and associated with a particular advertisement or group of advertisements, such as a campaign.
For example, a company selling fishing tackle may have a line of large lures, and may thus identify terms such as “lunker,” “sturgeon,” and “muskie fever” as keywords to associate with their advertisements for such large lures. Those advertisements may then be considered by the system for display when search results are displayed to a user who enters such terms. An advertisement may be selected for possible display if there is a “near” match also, for example, if a query includes terms that are known synonyms or mistypings/misspellings of the keyword terms for an advertisement. Some sponsors of the advertisements may associate several (e.g., dozens or hundreds) keywords with each of the advertisements.